Ask a car enthusiast what their ideal number of cars is, and the answer will probably be n+1. In this case, n means the number of cars they currently own, and +1 means, well, plus one. It’s not so much about hoarding, it’s about enjoying a larger breadth of automotive experiences, and sometimes having backups for the cars you already own. Oh, and what makes getting another car better? Not paying a dime for it.
The free car is often a fantasy, but real free cars are rarely perfect. After all, if you get known for an eclectic mix of older cars, chances are the cars you attract will be less-than-perfect. The question is: How far is too far? How bad does a free car have to be for you to say no?
When it comes to additional cars, I have limitations. My indoor storage and wrenching area is full of Porsches, and since it’s snow season in Toronto, any car I acquire must run and drive. Beyond that, I usually don’t want anything that’s rotted out. I mean, I don’t have 240-volt service in my garage, and although I technically can stick metal together with a 120-volt flux core welder, it’s going to be ugly. Fine for floor pans, but all the slag and spatter will require grinding if used on an A-surface. Oh yeah, and the factory emissions equipment needs to work fine because catalytic converters are bloody expensive and all the hardware just fuses together after several salt belt winters.
Then again, we are talking about a free car here, so I’m generally fairly open. If it doesn’t pique my interest, I can always register it, drive it for a week to see what it’s about, and sell it. Worst case, it’s so bad, it needs to be scrapped. Best case, someone gets a decent car for bottom-of-the-market pricing.
Plus, rules are sometimes made to be broken. If someone gave me a field-find DeTomaso Pantera, air-cooled Porsche, Honda S600, TVR Griffith, or something that just really gets my desire pumping with an engine that isn’t locked up, I don’t know if I’d be able to say no. Occasionally, the heart simply overrules the head, and we do things not because they’re easy, but because we thought they’d be easy. Similarly, if someone offers me a free parts car for a car I already own, and said parts car has rare stuff I want on it, I’m booking a U-Haul faster than you can order Domino’s.
So, how bad does a free car have to be for you to say no?
Top graphic image: David Tracy
All of them no matter what the condition is…. as long as there are no strings attached to what happens to them after I get them
I’ve been doing lots of soul searching mental gymnastics lately about what the point of it all is, and have been getting rid of clutter. So the free stuff is heading in the other direction and boy does it feel GOOD. Oddly enough, many people have a hard time accepting things for free or at all when offered up.
Not free cars but freeing cars: A cheap Maine beater-with-a-heater is a good thing to have in the fleet. Zero worries about washing the salty brine off, no stress about service intervals and expensive tires and sensors to replace. Cheap to insure and register. I bought a Subaru wagon for $200. That thing used up 7/9 lives for the few months I owned it and then I gave it to my friend. We clipped a tree while out on a trail one night. Not a problem. Jumped it over railroad tracks. Highsided snow mountains in mall parking lots. That $200 was money well spent. It went beyond basic transportation. To quote a great Tom Robbins character: It refilled my bucket of Wahoo.
Free cars aren’t free. You still need to register, insure, and maintain them. So unless it’s something I want and it’s in very decent shape, I am not interested.
I can’t say no and I have a big barn. Not a good combo. Some have worked out, others I’m not sure yet.
2004 Impala cop car and 2009 Corolla have become DDs. 1955 CJ-5 sits in a corner waiting to be worked on, blocked by a large pavement roller that doesn’t run.
Worse one was the 1996 Sebring convertible with the leaky top and electrical problems. I thought letting it dry out in the barn for a few months might fix it but it would still randomly blow a fuse when I tried to start it. Interior was trashed and needed tires. Drove the kids around the neighborhood a few times (they had never been in a convertible) and gave it to the local junkyard when I was down to my last fuse. It started overheating on the way there.
For something unique within my interest, no lower limit! 😎
Got a driveable Citroën 2CV once. Could have been saved, but I didn’t trust my own welding so much back then, so parted it out.
Got a driveable Chinese Honda clone motorcycle, you know the ugly ones old guys drive. Gave it the big allround service it needed, had fun a few days, then sold it.
Bicycles on the other hand tend to find me quite often: Give them a once over, test drive and sell them for $150 – and use the money on old cars stuff..
No car is free. It comes at the expense of space, time, and mental bandwidth.
Right now, anything rusty is out of the question. I’ve acquired a new rusty heap this year so that’s out of the question.
It’d need to be really cool to be added to my fleet (which is exactly how I got my Datsun 720 after vowing not to buy another vehicle). I’ve been offered a free Audi A3 that was sitting in a field and no thank you.
Or maybe if I was offered a quick project that could be flipped easily.
I got a free car once. My ex-brother-in-law stopped paying the note on a car he’d gotten my ex-father-in-law to cosign, so FIL took it away from him and gave it to me.
It was a triple-white ’91 (or so) Volkswagen Cabriolet, 5-speed. It wasn’t a bad car, and it was fun to have a drop-top for a while, but it just wasn’t the right car for me. So I sold it and gave FIL 90% of the take, just took a couple hundred for my effort in detailing and selling the VW.
I couldn’t accept a free car right now – there is nowhere to put it! It would have to be undeniably good, as I’d have to rent a storage unit or parking spot for it.
And as for when my list of fun projects gets short enough to get around to working on it, by then Father Time will have worked his magic on my hairline and waistline, and the Reaper will have me in his sights.
I’m pretty realistic these days about the projects I have time and energy for. A free car would have to be something special for me to say yes.
Since I live in the rust belt, I’m not likely to be offered anything worth keeping for free.
I actually did turn down a free ’76 Mercedes 280SLC about 5 years ago. It had been sitting in a garage for many years but was in fairly decent shape. I just absolutely had no space or time for it, and ’76 cars still need to be smog checked in California so the added hassle of making it pass smog was too much for me. Passed it on to an acquaintance. Now that I think about it I don’t know what happened to it.
Free? Every used almost 75% ok car i have acquired comes with an implanted dollar number I know I will spend to get it where I want it. There is no free, only misery if you have not internally agreed either yourself how much you will spend.
That is why I’ve dumped several cars. Not the cost of what I’ve incurred, but the speculated cost of what’s to come. However, being the bonehead I am, I will never say no to a free car and continue learning the hard way.
Hello brick wall. Hello head, are you back for another go? Absolutely since it was free.
Id consider almost any free vehicle in almost any condition except one brand. No matter how bad, or how good,…
I’d never take a Tesla . No Nazi mobile for me.
Really, someone try give me one for free… I won’t take it and I’ll dare you to donate it to a charity ( st Jude? WEVL?) instead.
And then when someone tries to give you the Tesla… “I just changed my mind! Whoopsie!”
Not a chance in hell
Is this intended as performance art?
It only needs to be a Nissan, VAG, or Stellantis to be an immediate no. Rust stops me after that.
My current daily (94 Toyota Pickup) was free but needed a timing chain. Best deal of my life 16 years of ownership.
Ooooo I love this question. My bar is EXTREMELY low. My ‘99 k2500 was free, barely ran, had no brakes, and Swiss cheese floors. A few hundred later it runs great, has brakes, and still has Swiss cheese floors, though I just got the new floors delivered. Just have to weld them up. This truck, when I got it, was filthy. It was an old county truck that had been abandoned for a couple years and whoever drove it before had absolutely trashed the interior. Food stains everywhere. But, because it was free, I took the gamble on it, and the ol’ boy cleaned up pretty well.
I’ve picked up other free vehicles before, mostly non-running. As long as a vehicle isn’t rusted completely to hell (the K2500 is honestly worse than I’d usually rescue but I needed a tow pig in my fleet), I’m willing to try and resuscitate pretty much anything free.
However low my bar, though, I do have a bar, and the only free truck I’ve ever turned down was another GMT400, this one a ‘98 C2500. A buddy of mine had somebody abandon this truck right in front of his house, and they even left the title on the driver seat. And as cool as that could have been, I can totally see why it was abandoned. It was literally filled to the ceiling with trash, with just a spot scooped out for the driver. The bed, also full of wet, nasty trash. It was even rustier than my K2500, and quite frankly the presence of used needles made me realize I didn’t need a parts truck that bad. Somebody did finally come take that C2500, and I’m hoping they junked it.
There’s not a car too bad, but there is an uncanny valley. I’d take any truly awful car with glee and sell it to the scrap yard for the price of one Summer tire, but something interesting? Something with potential? That’s a lot harder.
I had to help a friend scrap a P1800ES parts car last Winter to meet a storage vacancy deadline, it was rotten all the way through in every panel, every wheel was seized, the interior was gutted, and it still killed me inside a bit to see it be carted off to death. I don’t think I could do that.
So, give me an engineless Cavalier with structural rust, and I’ll gladly accept it as cash in raw steel, but a “ran when parked” NSU Ro80 with maybe-fixable rust and missing important components? You have cursed me. You have given me a nigh-unsellable thing that I can neither afford to repair nor bear to destroy. It was meant to be someone else’s wings, to bring whimsy and light elsewhere, but it burdens and blights me instead.
So please, either gift me a “runs, drives, AC blows cold” or an actual pile of scrap, but spare me the diamonds in the rough. I’ll buy the right one when I’m ready.
I don’t like to drive cars that:
So if I get one for free, I had better be able to get it to that point for not more than 50% of the cars value else it’s not worth the time, money or energy it will take to get it there.
Example: I have an aunt who has a 2003 Acura TL Type-S with 260k miles on it. It’s worth maybe $2K and it runs and drives, but it needs tires, brakes, all-new front suspension, an alignment, a new windshield, a new battery, it’s tags are expired, etc. etc. Considering the cost and effort to get that car roadworthy (in my mind) I’d take it straight to the junk yard if she gave it to me.
If you have a place to store and work on it, are mechanically inclined, and are willing to spend a little money to have a lot of fun, take it. Turn it into a crappy track car or off roader. Go as far as you feel safe with it until it breaks (for yourself, not the car). And then send it to the junk yard. As long as you make sure you’re not going to hurt yourself or others, you’ll have some cool memories and even a crunched up car is worth about $200 in scrap metal.
There aint no good in an evil hearted woman, I aint cut out to be no jessie james and you don’t go writing hot checks down in Mississippi…and there aint no free “free car”.
Especially the first part.
I did a friends moms garden and mulching in exchange for a purple Mercury Tracer.
We found out that since it had sat for a couple year in the backyard, the underside and rockers were utterly shot. Rusted out, his dad put his foot through the back doorjamb.
So i said thanks but no, and spent 600 bucks on a 1987 Crown Vic
Free would need to be no strings something of interest and worth fixing.
No structural rust or major perforation.
That Metropolitan can you just swap in a twin SU carb 1800cc “B” engine?
I’ve thought, that would give it more punch without going nuts.
It all depends on space available
If it’s a car I actually like or want? Then I’ll take it, regardless of condition. If it’s something like an Altima, Caliber, Compass, blah, blah, blah, then I don’t want your cast offs no matter what. Unless you don’t care if I’m just going to literally scrap it or flip it for a couple hundred. Then sure, why not, I’ll waste the afternoon.
I’d take a free Nash.
It’s more about what it is than what condition it’s in. If it’s not a car that interests me, I don’t want the hassle.
It’s the year of our made up lord 2025 and people are still taking “free” at face value…
99.999% of the time people would ever offer you a free car, it’s gonna end up taking you time or money or both (it’ll be both) to get rid of said hoopty. Keep your free car, it’s crap.
As far as we know the only thing Torch has put into the free Sienna is new tires.
Hopefully also insurance money, registration fees, etc. though maybe he likes to live life in the edge…
FARM USE
Totally agree but that philosophy needs extended to free college, free housing, free food, or anything the government gives away for free.
“So, how bad does a free car have to be for you to say no?”
Well that’s only part of it. Their are a bunch of other factors.
In my late 20s, my late ex-father-in-law offered me an old Pontiac Parisienne convertible from the late 1960s that had been sitting in his mother’s (my ex-wife’s grandmother) driveway for well over a decade. The car itself was straight and seemed in okay condition on the surface. But it had been sitting a long time unused.
First problem was I didn’t have anywhere to park it and would have had to rent a parking spot or garage… let alone somewhere to work on it.
Second problem was that I was 99% sure it needed a lot of work… why else would they have stopped driving it? And I didn’t have the thousands needed to replace all the rubber bits and seals. replacing fluids, fixing the brakes, replacing the dry rotted tires, etc.
Third problem… I was busy. At the time, I had a full time job and a family with young kids that were soaking up my time. I didn’t have time to spend on that ‘free’ car that wouldn’t have been a project to get on the road.
Fourth problem… I already had a car and had no need for an additional car that would essentially be a toy. Nor did I have money or time to fool around with an old toy-vehicle.
Someone in the family eventually did get it running again and I recall hearing that it cost them thousands to just get it into drivable condition.
I considered it a bullet dodged.
Getting a free car can almost be like being offered free land… free land with toxic waste on it.
Yeah the land will be valuable… but only after you spend a ton of money cleaning it up.
Getting back to how bad the car has to be… well for me, not only does it have to be better than some of the rusted shit boxes David Tracy used to own, it also has to be the type of vehicle I’d want to own and drive after I fix it up.
Also, there can be no strings attached either. It’s either a straight gift and I can then do what I want or forget it.
Yeah, but back then you couldn’t take a few pix and post it on BaT as a no-reserve project car….
It’s not how bad the car is . . . is where it’s from. I.e. I don’t want to strings attached to a car given to me by the in-laws.